Astronomers looking for asteroids and other heavenly bodies blocked from view by sunlight that could impact Earth have found a mile-wide asteroid that will come within an astonishing 4.4 million miles, close enough to raise astronomical eyebrows, the New York Times reports.
Dubbed 2022 AP7, the asteroid will not come close to crashing into Earth as far as current models can calculate, but the gap it will have on its next pass will not likely be the same path as in the future, given the influence gravity from various objects can play on its path. Astronomers say it will be thousands of years before it will run a true possibility of hitting Earth.
There are tens of thousands of asteroids that cross the path of Earth, with astronomers tracking about half of them. Scientists are concerned with rocks measuring about 460 feet in diameter because those are large enough to survive traveling through the atmosphere and could devastate a large city.